Setting up a Test Agent to act as proxy in tests

Using one of your Test Agents as a proxy makes it possible to run tests with Test Agents that would otherwise not be reachable from the Internet and Netrounds cloud servers. You might, for example, want to test and monitor an IP telephony network that does not allow any connection to the Internet.

The Netrounds proxy enables a forwarding mechanism for the management traffic between the Test Agents and the Netrounds cloud server in networks that do not have public IP addresses.

To set up and use a Test Agent as a proxy, follow these steps:

Allow Internet access for one of the interfaces on one of your Test Agents. This Test Agent is commonly placed in the server hall or core network.

Enable Proxy on that Test Agent (called "proxy Test Agent" from now on):

On the main page at app.netrounds.com, navigate to Test Agents, and click the relevant Test Agent in this view.

It is recommended that you configure a static IP address on the interface to which the other "internal" Test Agents connect, so that the address does not change unexpectedly as might happen when using DHCP.

Connect another interface ("eth1", etc.) of the proxy Test Agent to the internal network that does not allow Internet connections.

For each of the other Test Agents that you want to be able to connect to the Internet via the proxy Test Agent, do the following:

Log in directly to the Test Agent (that is, not via the Netrounds GUI).

If the Test Agent is already registered with the Netrounds cloud server, go to Utilities > Change login server and change the login server from login.netrounds.com to the IP address of the proxy Test Agent interface ("eth1", etc.) configured in step 2 (the internal address to the proxy).

If the Test Agent is not yet registered, do the registration according to this page.

(Optional:) Since the Test Agents need to have a working NTP synchronization, the NTP server likely has to be reconfigured. Do the following:

If you have your own NTP server, change the NTP server from ntp.netrounds.com to your internal NTP server for all Test Agents, or:

Change the NTP server for all internal Test Agents from ntp.netrounds.com to the IP address of proxy Test Agent's "eth1" interface, and let the proxy Test Agent continue to synchronize to ntp.netrounds.com.

The proxy functionality is now configured and ready to use. This allows the Test Agents to communicate with the Netrounds cloud server via the proxy Test Agent, which forwards their traffic to the Netrounds cloud.